Questions and Answers with Author James Trevelyan

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You probably know that I now spend most of my time running our little technology startup company Close Comfort. We recently passed a significant milestone with over 1000 of our energy-saving air conditioners sold to happy customers.

It all started with my marriage to wonderful wife and partner Samina Yasmeen. Living with her Pakistan family brought summer reality.

Two billion people South Asia dread the summer. Shimmering heat starts in March and April and stifling sweaty nights last into November. Listless days follow nights of fitful sleep at 40C under noisy fans. A tiny privileged elite run energy guzzling split air conditioners, crippling electricity grids.

Load shedding, a novelty in Australia, is routine across south Asia and Africa: power is on and off every hour or two. Batteries keep fans and LED lights on but the unit electricity cost soars.

Sustainable relief from heat and humidity is now in sight thanks to our energy-saving air conditioning technology. It’s a great thrill that our air conditioners are now in 5 countries, albeit with small-scale marketing campaigns.

Engineers’ remuneration and recognition is strongly related to the value they create – a well-supporting finding in economics.

Our research shows that engineers today know little about value creation, and what little they do know does not align well with investors’ ideas.

We conclude therefore that engineers will be paid less than they think they are worth (which agrees with survey findings) and second, there is plenty of potential to improve engineers’ remuneration and recognition if they take the time to learn how to create value.

I was fortunate to discuss artificial intelligence with a philosopher, Julius Kovesi, in the 1970s as I led the team that eventually developed sheep shearing robots. With great insight, he argued that robots, in essence, were built on similar principles to common toilet cisterns and were nothing more than simple automatons. “Show me a robot that deliberately tells you a lie to manipulate your behaviour, and then I will accept you have artificial intelligence!” he exclaimed.

In this address, I talked about the differences in engineering practice between Paris and Tunis and how young Tunisian engineers can learn to be experts by understanding how they can contribute economic, commercial and social value from their work.

Bill Williams and I have now written a book chapter and a journal article about these ideas, but it will still be several months before they appear. If you would like advance copies of these manuscripts, please write to us.

Tunis has some wonderfully picturesque locations, particularly at Sidi Bou Said, where the traditional architecture and streetscape was preserved by orders of the French Protectorate.

I visited the ancient Carthage port and ruins of the citadel…

Leftover “spare parts” fascinated me: these exquisite marble columns represented the technological state of the art at the time of the Roman occupation.

At Al Jem, there is a vast, wonderfully restored Roman amphitheatre which serves as a reminder of Tunisia’s past engineering achievements, albeit under Roman tutelage.

Sometimes a research result is so obvious that you miss it. That’s why researchers collaborate: there is less chance of overlooking the obvious.

Bill Williams and I have written about engineering value creation: how most engineers create value even though they don’t necessarily invent anything new or do designs.

And we both managed to miss something obvious. Engineers create value when they educate others. In my book, The Making of an Expert Engineer, chapter 8, I wrote about the ways that engineers teach others (and also learn from others, often at the same time). This teaching and learning activity is more extensive than many engineering students might expect.

Engineers are often said to build things, make cars, planes, phones and so on. But they don’t. Other people do, however, with the help and guidance of engineers. So engineers spend the largest single chunk of their time on technical coordination (chapter 9), informally influencing and leading others. Across all the engineers we have observed, they spend 25-30% of their time on that: gaining the willing and conscientious collaboration of others who contribute time, effort, knowledge and skills within an agreed time frame.

Why so much time?

In essence, engineers accumulate technical knowledge and understanding and use that to align the actions of all the other people who contribute their performances sufficiently closely with technical intentions that the investors who provide the money will walk away sufficiently satisfied, enough of the time, so they come back and do it all again for something new. Repeat business in other words.

And that means that engineers spend much of their time explaining why things have to happen a certain way. And explain this in different English or other dialects so that all the other actors, ranging from investors to contractors to suppliers to government regulators and local communities learn enough to collaborate effectively.

And that’s not all the teaching.

Much of the teaching performed by engineers cannot be attributed to a specific coordination effort. One of the most obvious examples is teaching younger engineers, helping them learn in the workplace, passing on knowledge and technical insights. Studies (e.g. Bailey & Barley 2010) have shown that younger engineers need up to an hour a day of one-on-one guidance and teaching in the workplace, and much of that is performed by more experienced engineers.

Now, one of the most interesting findings from our research with Australian firms comes from asking about charge codes for teaching younger engineers. A simple question “When you are helping to develop the skills of younger engineers in your organization, is there a charge code that you enter for that in your time sheet?” Almost (but not quite) invariably the answer is “No, I have to do it in my own time, in effect. It’s just a responsibility that goes with the job, I guess.”

Australian engineering firms, maybe other firms as well, we don’t yet have enough data to be sure, overlook the value of training their own engineers as something that creates value.

Well, we are guilty too.

We overlooked the value created when engineers develop the skills, knowledge and attitudes of others.

We have therefore amended our recent posts and will also have to amend our publications which, fortunately, are still “in press”.

Before reading this, please see the post of December 7, 2017, where I have released a comprehensive guide for engineers, students and educators on value creation in engineering enterprises…..

In my last post, I wrote a brief explanation about value and value creation, noting that “value” has many different meanings.

In this post I will summarize what Bill Williams and I think is a new theory of engineering value creation, the subject of my address to the International Conference on Engineering Education Research (iCEER 2016) in Sydney on November 24.

Most engineers create both societal and economic value from their work, but without much awareness on how they achieve that.

Interviewing engineers with my students, we noticed how many engineers find it hard to explain how their work creates value, especially engineers who are not designing new products. At first we were surprised to find that this was no easier for engineers with commerce or MBA degrees. Later, we realized that this reflects the lack of theoretical understanding about the links between engineering and economics.

Why is this important? Why does the lack of theory really matter? Surely it’s obvious.

Well, no, it is not obvious. And without a theory to explain engineering value creation it hard to teach students why engineering is valuable. Continue reading →

The word ‘value’ is challenging for engineers because it has several related meanings.

First the mathematical meaning. ‘Value’ denotes a number associated with a variable, for example x=2.72. It can also denote a numeric value in a spreadsheet cell resulting from calculations.

Next, we speak of “human values”, usually positive or desirable attributes such as honesty, humility and loyalty.

We can also appreciate “value systems” such as a money-oriented system of values, or a religious or humanist system of values that influence human behaviour. Many organisations espouse their own values, though aligning individual actions can often be problematic.

For this discussion, ‘value’ is a measure of the extent beneficial or useful, often associated with a monetary value. Thus, we talk about the “face value” of a currency note or the “value of a house”.

“Value creation” implies activity that results in something valuable, beneficial or useful. Human values and value systems only arise from long and complex socialisation within a community, and a mathematical values exist through definitions.

Most discussions on value in business centre on the notion of “exchange-value”. This is usually an amount of money exchanged in return for a service, or artefact, or the entitlement to a service or to acquire an artefact at some future time.

If we think about the motivation behind a decision to spend money, or to work to gain something, we encounter the pleasurable anticipation of acquiring something valuable. It might be the future entitlement to a service or possession of an object. It could also be gaining peace of mind, a feeling of security, through entitlement to protection from something unpleasant. For example, people pay taxes to their government in return for security: protection against the possibility of destructive behaviour by other people, disease, or loss of their property. Philosophers refer to this notion as “use-value”, the emotional pleasure experience associated with the acquisition.

Value creation, therefore, denotes activity that results in services or artefacts that can be enjoyed by people.

Since this emotional pleasure lies at the root of value creation, “use-value” is subjective: everyone will experience the service or artefact differently, and enjoyment will depend on circumstances. The unpleasant anticipation of feeling thirsty when walking outside on a hot day motivates people to exchange money for bottled water they can carry with them. The apparent “use-value” is heightened if, for example, there are no other water sources or known providers nearby, even though the quality and quantity of water in a bottle is precisely known.

There is another consequence from understanding the emotional basis of value: value creation depends as much on the user as the creator. In other words, value is co-created. For example, the use-value of the bottled water is probably greater if the water slakes one’s thirst on a hot day, than if the water is used to wet some sand in order to create a sand sculpture, or poured onto a shrivelled weed.

The extent to which a person can anticipate a specific pleasure or pain, or understand another person’s second-hand description, also influences use-value.

Finally, a person’s perception of use-value can motivate a decision to buy or sell in exchange for an amount of money, revealing an exchange-value. Since every person sees it differently, with an unconsciously different potential exchange-value, their response in any given situation is unpredictable.

Understanding notions of value creation takes us into the realm of subjective experiences and all the different ways that people anticipate these experiences. Then we can begin to appreciate the various ways that value can be created by engineers for their clients and humanity.

Yes, it’s difficult at first. Many engineers yearn for fixed objective truths, and shy away from fuzzy subjective emotions. However, our research shows that engineers who understand value creation enjoy more respect and far more rewarding careers, both intrinsic enjoyment and financial benefits.

The next post will start revealing how engineers create value through their work.

Post Script

If you are fluent in a language other than English, I would appreciate your comments on how these ideas are represented in other languages or cultures.

Bill Williams and I have recently discovered that many engineers know little if anything about creating value for investors. Supported by students, we interviewed practicing engineers and found that, for example, most associate the word “value” with a number in a spreadsheet.

We also discovered little in the business and engineering research literature that can help.

A small number of “expert engineers” have worked it out for themselves, without necessarily being able to explain it in simple terms. They are well rewarded by their clients and employers because they create so much value for their enterprises.

We have recently written a detailed explanation which, we think, explains how these experts create value, and we hope this makes sense for many more engineers who could just make enough difference, everywhere. Not only to help frustrated Americans. Engineers who know how to create value effectively could transform our world and eliminate poverty.

Since the industrial revolution, we have all come a long way, but most of us know we cannot sustain our civilization into the future without making some big changes. We engineers have to lead these changes, but we need huge resources from everyone else to make it happen. And that requires insights into value creation that elude the vast majority of engineers right now.

Stunting occurs when infants drink contaminated water causing repeated diarrhoea attacks which result in permanent damage to the intestines, restricting nutrient intake so affected children suffer from malnutrition even if they eat enough. Nearly half of all children in South Asia and other parts of the world are now affected. So many piped water schemes provide contaminated water at the point of consumption. The water pumped into the system may be safe to drink, but what goes into the mouth is not.

The only way to start fixing this problem is safe drinking water distribution. Obtaining and treating bulk supplies of safe drinking water is relatively inexpensive: even desalination costs only $0.50 per ton. While there are many water-scarce regions, in most there is still plenty to drink once treated. The scarcity affects agriculture more than drinking.

Piped water supply utilities are failing in most low-income countries and few if any provide a 24/7 supply of safe water. For example, “good” utilities in South Asia provide intermittent water for 1-2 hours every 2nd day: sewerage seeps in through leaks during the “off” time contaminating the network. Many leaks result from crude attempts by engineers to enforce revenue collection by temporarily disconnecting adjacent water and sewerage pipes to recalcitrant customers. Air trapped in pipes destroys meters. A downward spiral in service quality and revenue collection forces people to stand in line to bribe tanker drivers to refill contaminated domestic tanks. Water has to be filtered and sterilized to make it safe, or supplied in 20 liter bottles at $100-150/ton.

Low trust between consumers, utilities and government undermines attempts to improve service quality. Conventional water supply technologies require trust and collaboration between diverse social actors which is much more difficult than in high income countries so the problem persists.

And for the majority of people who have no piped water, the situation is even worse. When women carry and purify water their labour is unpaid but comes at a cost: more than $30/ton across South Asia using standard value of time models.

The consequences of drinking water safety failures affect everyone: the real cost of getting just enough can exceed 10% of family income. It helps to explain stubbornly persistent poverty, stunting and malnutrition from environmental enteropathy caused by fecal contamination. The economic and health catastrophe in low-income countries affects us all.

In the next post, I will describe why so many previous attempts to solve this problem have failed and how I came to see some elegant solutions.